HOUSEHOLDS are paying to keep the Tamar Valley Power Station viable, an independent review of Tasmania’s electricity prices has concluded.
The Independent Review of the Tasmanian Electricity Sector’s Issues Paper shows the gas-fired station has been propped up by households and small businesses through recent power price increases.
The report indicates these two groups, as non-contestable customers, are bearing the burden to keep the Aurora Energy station up and running despite it being only a back-up option for all electricity users.
The report said: “Prices for non-contestable customers, through the regulatory framework, have been increased to preserve the viability of the TVPS. Essentially non-contestable customers appear to be funding the ‘insurance premium’ being the difference between the market-related value of the TVPS and its full cost yet the facility provides risk mitigation for all electrical users.”
Opposition energy spokesman Matt Groom said households were paying because in June 2010 the Labor-Green Government had changed the rules for the economic regulator, which meant prices were based on long range marginal costs (LRMC) and not market costs.
“The Green-Labor government is forcing households and small businesses to subsidise Aurora by artificially jacking up power prices to a higher level than they should be,” he said yesterday. A table in the Issues Paper shows long range marginal costs estimates can be up to 12.4 per cent greater than market cost estimates.
Mr Groom said LRMC estimates pushed the costs for households up while protecting companies that could buy bulk power from interstate firms in the contestable market.
“The Labor-Green government has rigged the role of the economic regulator to artificially jack up power prices in order to stop Aurora from going broke,” he said.
Mr Groom said the report confirmed the Liberals’ long-held belief that small business and households are paying more for power than they should.
The paper shows that if the energy market was opened up to competition, households and small businesses could be paying less for power, he said.
Energy Minister Bryan Green said the Government would properly consider the review’s findings after all deliberations by its panel of experts.
He did not comment about the TVPS or the LRMC …
• Atop TV Sets, a Power Drain Runs Nonstop
The little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single-largest electricity drain in many (American) homes.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: June 25, 2011
Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.
There are 160 million so-called set-top boxes in the United States, one for every two people, and that number is rising. Many homes now have one or more basic cable boxes as well as add-on DVRs, or digital video recorders, which use 40 percent more power than the set-top box.
One high-definition DVR and one high-definition cable box use an average of 446 kilowatt hours a year, about 10 percent more than a 21-cubic-foot energy-efficient refrigerator, a recent study found.
These set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use. The recent study, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that the boxes consumed $3 billion in electricity per year in the United States — and that 66 percent of that power is wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded.
MORE: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26cable.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
